Hi Guys,

By hook or by crook, my girlfriend and I are planning to be in Canada by summer 2010. Orginally we planned to go on a reccie, try and get a job, then come back on PR via TWP or PNP routes. However we are now considering trying to go straight over on the Bunac route and suck it and see for a year to see whether its for us..... instead of spending £3k on a reccie next summer!

I've been searching through vast quantities of Bunac type threads this morning and have picked up some excellent information. However i have a few quite specific queries i wondered if anyone could please help with. Also if any of my assumptions are wrong, please do say.

We are both under 30 and appear to qualify for a Bunac visa. My girlfriend spent 3 months working in Canada at a Summer Camp in 2005, so our first priority is to check whether she is eligible, depending on which type of visa she was granted previously. Let's just assume all is well for now though!

We have lived together for over 12 months so once we are in Canada, could we then apply for PR as common law couple? We have mortgage statements etc to prove we are linked for a number of years.

I am an mechanical and electrical engineer with BEng Hons, and hope i should find work fairly easily. My girlfriend is a BEd Hons teacher, and we're aware it may be tough finding work even with a PR visa. What i was wondered is can she begin the process of teacher certification with whichever province we choose, whilst on a Bunac visa? Or do you need to be landed with PR in hand before the process can begin? I guess i would ask the same question with regards to me gaining PEng?

I'll no doubt have some more queries in the next day or two, however your advice on these points and any other matters would be much appreciated.

Hi,

Your girlfriend should probably know whether she went over last time on a Bunac visa...you can only get each type of working holiday visa once in your lifetime. The working holiday visa for students and the working holiday visa for non-students, both types are issued by Bunac as far as I'm aware.

Also you can only apply for PR as a common law couple if one of you was canadian. If one of you was lucky enough to get a canadian employer to go through the whole rigmarol of attempting to get you a positive LMO and offering you a permanent position you could then apply under the federal skilled worker programme and your partner could be included in the application as you are common law.

There are a few people who have done this it seems...but it's not as easy as you think converting a bunac working holiday visa into PR and there's definitely an element of luck in coming across open minded employers who will want to go through the time and effort in doing this for you

Hi there. Yeah g/f is going to check her paperwork tonight and possibly speak to Bunac to check which visa she was originally granted.

With regards to FSW visa, I would’ve thought an employer would be more keen to go through the process of making someone a permanent employee and sponsoring them for a visa if they have already worked for their company and are in the country. I was doubtful of my chances of finding a suitable job and sponsorship whilst still based in the UK, and with the way visas appear to have gone, I thought our best chance was to actually get there and find work. If the Bunac route fails we could possibly make it on a TWP instead, although admittedly I have not much research on these yet. Luckily mechanical and electrical engineering posts appear on most of the PNP and OUP lists, so our choices aren’t so limited to choosing a region.

I stumbled across a document from the Ontario teachers website and it also appears that as long as g/f had a current work permit, which would hopefully be granted by Bunac, she could also start the long process of getting teacher qualifications processed. I just have a bad feeling that she has already used up her once in a lifetime ticket………. Doh!

Yeah I would say it's easier actually being out here and trying to find work rather than doing it all 'faceless' from the other side of the world. But you will find a lot of employers who just don't want to go to the hassle of trying to get you a positive LMO.
Bunac visas bypass the lmo system but if you then go on to apply for PR or TWP your employer will need to apply for an LMO for you which means 3 months of advertising your job and them being able to prove that there are no willing or able canadians to do it. (Unless you're lucky enough that your occupation is on the under pressure list and then it's only 1 week of advertising).

If your girlfriend wants to teach I think she will also needed to get a more detailed police check and I think a medical (Something to do with working with kids)

From what we can gather from various threads, the process for getting teacher accreditation is lengthy and pretty onerous! However it’s like this for any type of visa, so even if we are only in the country on a temporary visa it would just have to be manageable until we got PR.

Luckily mechanical and/or electrical engineers and technologists do crop up on the OUP lists in pretty much all the provinces, in some shape or form. I guess my only issue with this would be whether I would actually be over qualified to get a positive outcome for a technologists job, which normally only requires an HNC/HND. I’m not sure how the accrediting bodies would view a UK BEng Hons qualified engineer applying as a technologist………. Anyone know?! Time to start another thread for all the engineers I think!

With regards to FSW visa, I would’ve thought an employer would be more keen to go through the process of making someone a permanent employee and sponsoring them for a visa if they have already worked for their company and are in the country. I was doubtful of my chances of finding a suitable job and sponsorship whilst still based in the UK, and with the way visas appear to have gone, I thought our best chance was to actually get there and find work.

Hi! You would think that once employed a company would be willing to maintain you! I went to Canada on the non student work visa and landed a BA position with one of the major banks. The bank poured a hefty amount into training me yet were unwilling to sponsor me for a work permit owing to company policy.

That's just my story. I was based in Toronto where there are thousands of residents/citizens who were more than willing to do my job meaning the bank did not have to go through the exhausting process of LMO. Some friends in Alberta have been able to secure work permits via their employer

The best thing is to thoroughly research your intended profession in Canada and figure out areas where your occupation would be in high demand.

I am new to all the terms used..can someone please explain what BUNAC is please..

Thank you....

You might be new to the site Hattie, but you must know by now that the Wiki (on blue bar at top of page) holds the answer to pretty much every question you can ask?!?

http://britishexpats.com/wiki/Canadian_Abbreviations

hey folks, bit of good news on the bunac visa front. it appears the g/f held a Bunac visa for USA in 2004, then a job specific work visa from CHC in London in 2005. I spoke to Bunac and they advised that they wouldnt expect either of these visas to cause any issues with getting a Bunac non student open work visa!

now i just need to persuade her that this is a perfectly feasible and possibly even better way of getting into Canada, instead of spending £3k on a reccie and attempting to get a job and apply through PNP

Hi kancell

I can only speak of our experience which was 2006/7 so you should check if things have changed.

We came over in 2006 on BUNAC student WP as we had just finished our Masters degrees, Prior to which I had worked for 2 years in my respective field.

After a lot of hard work of job hunting from the UK I got a job offer but there was a lot of hard work behind it and I can't emphasise that enough. My company (a well known international engineering consultancy) gave me a one year contract in line with my WP but said that if things worked out both ways in terms of liking each other they would sponsor me and hence us as Mr L2S could be my common-law.

I know they wouldn't have given some unknown 20 something year old Brit a job that involved them going through the process of LMO etc but they were happy to take the risk as I had my own WP.

Very few of the engineering companies I applied to every got back to us. MMM in Vancouver forwarded my resume to their Kamloops office as they were desperate for people and after the phone interview I could understand why! (sorry anyone in Kamloops)

Also, the engineering sector in Vancouver is very much about who you know, so most jobs come about from networking and are not advertised, hence very hard to get a job not being a local and even harder not being here on the ground.

Anyways, my company nominated me for BC PNP after I had been here about 8 months with Mr L2S as my common-law and 6 months-ish later we landed as PRs. SWEET!

The fact that I had already worked for them helped loads with the PNP application.

I'm still working for the same company and have just passed my professional exams. I could bring my degrees and work experience from the UK to help this process along, but I didn't have any professional certifications so I'm unsure if you are already a chartered Eng.

I think APEG have differing rules depending on whether you are on a WP or are a PR. Best check.

Mr L2S had to start off as a technican for 3 months, but after that very quickly moved up the ranks and now has a very good job with a municipality in Vancouver. He's just working through his BC-APEG application although this translates to me doing it this evening as he isn't too good at form filling!

For us the BUNAC to PR via BC PNP worked really well but then we are both very hard workers both in terms of researching PR processes and finding backdoors to go through, and with work to prove we are worth sponsoring. If we had come over and done a ski season, or not had done our homework or research on PR routes then I doubt we would had been able to get PR or at least not so quickly.

We also work in critical skill shortage industries.

Anyways, if you have any specific questions then please feel free to PM me.

Keep up with all this research that you are doing, and re-read things many times as you pick-up so much info along the way that things change.

Good luck
L2S